Tag Archives: brexit

In this Friday, June 24, 2016 file photo, a remain supporter stops to talk to people as he walks around with his European flag across the street from the Houses of Parliament in London. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

When British voters chose to leave the European Union Thursday night, they weren’t just voting against Brussels’ immigration policies, they were also voting against Europe’s growing list of green mandates.

The EU’s allowance of millions of refugees and open borders policy did play a large role in the “Brexit” vote, but it was also a repudiation of global warming policies Brussels has imposed on the U.K.

“The decision by the British people to leave the European Union will have significant and long-term implications for energy and climate policies,” Dr. Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“By large majorities, voters who saw multiculturalism, feminism, the Green movement, globalisation and immigration as forces for good voted to remain in the EU; those who saw them as a force for ill voted by even larger majorities to leave,” Ashcroft wrote.

Britons have been struggling under high energy prices for years, in part due to rules passed down from EU bureaucrats. Environmentalists opposed leaving the EU for precisely this reason. The Brexit vote signals the U.K. is lurching right, and will likely reject heavy-handed climate policies.

“It is highly unlikely that the party-political green consensus that has existed in Parliament for the last 10 years will survive the seismic changes that are now unfolding after Britain’s Independence Day,” Peiser said.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation after the vote, since he supported the staying in the EU. Cameron was one of the main forces behind the so-called “green consensus” in Parliament, which supported green energy subsidies and energy taxes to pay for them.

I try not to follow politics very closely but I read in a few places that there have been no exit polls taken during the Brexit vote. None. Contrary to what happens in most all other elections. Could it be that the British government, which is rabidly anti-Brexit and counts all the votes, doesn’t want to be bothered with having to explain why their vote count is so at odds with exit polls?

If you read the presstitute media, Brexit—the referendum tomorrow on the UK’s exit from the
EU— is about racism. According to the story line, angry rightwing racists of violent inclinations want to leave the EU to avoid having to accept more dark-skinned immigrants into England.

Despite the constant propaganda against exit, polls indicated that more favored leaving the EU than remaining until a female member of Parliament, Jo Cox, was killed by a man that a witness said shouted “Brexit.” Cox was an opponent of leaving the EU.

The UK government and presstitute media used Cox’s murder to drive home the propaganda that violent racists were behind Brexit. However, other witnesses gave a different report. The Guardian, which led with the propaganda line, did report later in its account that “Other witnesses said the attack was launched after the MP became involved in an altercation involving two men near where she held her weekly surgery.” Of course, we will never know, because Cox’s murder is too valuable of a weapon against Brexit.

You know the establishment is paniccing when they roll out Bono (and Liam Neeson) to appeal to the Irish (which make up around 10% of the UK electorate) to vote “Remain” or face “the worst ramifications.”As The Irish Times reports,U2 warns “a Brexit vote will make us weak,” suggesting a vote to ‘Leave’ would mean Thursday bloody Thursday and a vote to ‘Stay’ would be a Beautiful Day.

Irish4Europe communications director David D’Arcy said: “Irish represent up to 10 per cent of the UK electorate and we are asking each and every one of those Irish voters to make voting Remain their first task tomorrow.” And as The Irish Times reports,

The band posted a video on its Facebook page from British Irish group Irish4Europe. The video says a vote to leave the European Union could damage progress in Northern Ireland.

“We were asked to repost this video, we like it and we’re humbled to be in it. For Irish voters in Britain, don’t go we’d miss you… Europe without Britain seems unimaginable to us. Bono, Edge, Adam, Larry,” U2 wrote.

We are one week away from the EU referendum, the moment when the British people will be called upon to make a historic decision – will they vote to “Brexit” or to “Bremain”? Both camps have been going at each other with fierce campaigns to tilt the vote in their direction, but according to the latest polls, with the “Leave” camp’s latest surge still within the margin of error, the projected outcome is too close to call.

It is a rare moment in history. The British haven’t had their say since they voted to join the European Community back in 1975. What was initially thought of as a project to unite Europe into one common market, with benefits of free trade and great promises of increasing national wealth, has mutated into a completely different entity. The British have, instead, found themselves being dragged into a regional economy of zero growth and a weak Euro, and heavily indebted states. You may have come across the arguments of both camps, but here we wish to address what a “Brexit” or “Bremain” scenario would mean for Britain.

If the UK Bremains..

If the British vote to “Bremain”, Britain will start to operate with a “special status” within the union, after Prime Minister David Cameron reportedly renegotiated Britain’s relationship with the EU, in anticipation of the referendum. Cameron tried to change some of the rules of the agreement, to address the concerns of the British public that made them favor a Brexit in the first place. The matter of ‘sovereignty’ came first in the list of the most common anti-EU grievances, as the public felt the country no longer had a say in its own affairs, and was pressured to comply with EU regulations as part of the greater union. Cameron succeeded in having the UK released from any commitment to be politically integrated into the EU body, and there were talks about granting some autonomy and power to national parliaments, through the “red card mechanism” (i.e. if 55% of national parliaments object to one vote, they can block a proposal submitted by the European Commission). This proposal, however, does not in any way alter the UK-EU relationship, while it is also unlikely to be practically enforced, much like the preexisting “yellow” card that has only been used twice so far. Thus, British autonomy, specifically, remains unaddressed.

When it comes to economic self-governance, Cameron got an explicit recognition that the Euro is not the single currency of the EU, and that the UK will not be pressured to contribute to the Eurozone bailouts. But what about the British economy itself? British businesses have long complained about losing competitiveness. In general, the EU single market makes it easier to move money and products and grants business a large consumer base. However, the data released by the Office for National Statistics casts a different light on this point: Europe has become a less important trading partner. In 2000, the EU represented 60% of the UK’s total exports. As of April 2016, this number has dropped to 48%. Meanwhile, imports from the EU have been within the range of 47% to 55% since end-2014, and are thereby contributing to a growing trade deficit.

Free Trade, Brexit, and the WTO

The debate surrounding the EU referendum in Britain, scheduled in two weeks, and the fate of the UK outside of the EU, is now in full swing. Unsurprisingly, little of substance has been said so far on the issue. One would expect that both sides would be better prepared with arguments to support their cause, but many aspects discussed have not only been erroneous, but have appealed to people’s fear rather than their intelligence. Both the Remain and the Leave camps have failed to show how either decision would enhance economic and political freedom; instead, they have tried to one-up each other in the preservation and growth of the existing welfare state, military complex, and bureaucratic apparatus.

Setting aside the disappointing democratic discourse within the UK, an even more irritating factor have been the pronouncements of international organizations regarding the effects of a possible Brexit. As if economic progress were impossible before the creation of European inter-governmental institutions, the IMF has repeatedly warned that a Leave vote would “precipitate a protracted period of heightened uncertainty, leading to financial market volatility and a hit to output.” The latest to join in this is the World Trade Organization, arguably the least entitled to display self-righteousness given its track record. Roberto Azevedo, WTO’s director general, has declared that in the event of a Brexit, he doesn’t “know exactly how members are going to behave [toward the UK] and what kind of engagement there will be. [Negotiations might take] two, three, four years. It can take a decade or more. It depends on the complexities of the negotiations and the appetite for members to do it quickly… [but] there would be a vacuum. The UK would be the only WTO member without a list of its commitments… it’s a legal uncertainty. I don’t have a crystal ball and the message I am bringing to you is that nobody has that crystal ball.”